Slashdot Mirror
Washingtonpost.com Wants Identities of Posters
mytrip recommends a News.com account of a panel discussion in which the Washington Post's online executive editor Jim Brady argued against anonymity on his site. He's welcome to try to carve out a space for civilized discourse, but it seems that he can't help alienating the Net-savvy whenever he opens his mouth to speak of it. "... he would like to see a technology that could identify people who violate site standards — and if need be — automatically kick them off for good. ... Brady also lamented that closing user accounts doesn't keep bad eggs off a site. They just come back and create new ones ... Brady believes that in the next five years people will be required to identify themselves in some way at many sites. 'I don't know whether we do it with a credit card number, a driver's license or passport ...'"
We all know that the best Slashdot comments come from anonymous cowards, right? This guy is nuts to require registration!
So I guess the Wapo won't be quoting anonymous sources anymore.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
One user = one login. It is the stuff of internet legend.
God spoke to me.
He can simply require anyone who wants an account on his site to present themselves at his office with three pieces of photo ID and a completed application form. He can then interview them, check their references, and decide whether or not they are acceptable.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
none of the above does anything to stop abusers.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Oddly, this guy has a point. Most reasonably popular unmoderated forums quickly degrade into meaningless flames, trolls, and drivel. All it takes is a few bad apples to turn the rest of the barrel rotten, as the saying goes. Funny enough, I think Slashdot has the most effective and elegant user-moderation system I've seen. Sure, it's not 100% perfect, but more times than not, the random trolls and other crap are already modded out of my viewing range by the time I get to an article.
Most people associate bad Internet behavior with anonymity. That's true to some extent - obviously people are much less civil when dealing remotely and dispassionately with other people. Put a random Internet troll in a biker bar, and I guarantee you he'll be *much* more polite to his fellow patrons. But Slashdot has proven that you don't need to lose anonymity to create an effective flame and troll filter. Let your most trusted users do it.
I'm always surprised that more sites don't copy this system. Or maybe someone has, and I just haven't heard of it?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
But that's just it... For the same reason that paid registrations are not common, all of his proposed authentication schemes won't become common. Registration is onerous and invasive. At a minimum, it's a hassle to have to provide information. Worse, you have to pay a price, whether it's with dollars or personal details (which, as we all know, have great value to companies). Even people who are not privacy nuts dislike having to give out their name and email address just to view some online content or post a comment.
So what will happen? Sites are welcome to create more complex authentication and registration schemes... but as long as other sites don't have such schemes, online participants will naturally gravitate to the sites that have the lowest barriers to entry. So the successful sites will be those that make it very easy to participate.
Of course, we already see this online. Wikipedia and Slashdot are two examples of sites that don't try to prevent anonymous contributions... instead they rely on community self-policing to filter the useful contributions from the trolls. Ultimately, that's the solution: it keeps the barrier to participation low (so you can build up a thriving community), and the mechanism of burying crappy contributions inherently highlights better contributions.
The reason that many sites don't like this answer is that it is hard to generate a useful community (for one thing, you can't treat your users as merely cattle to squeeze money out of--you have to actually build value to keep them visiting your site).
Sadly, sites that adopt this will still be cesspools of hateful comments. Because, ultimately, they don't have the courage to edit fairly and won't adopt ./-style moderation.
So... newspaper cite will still be cesspool of hate. Fair-minded users who value privacy will still ditch. Phhht.
The real lesson is that old-media sites still haven't learned what makes internet comment boards successful, and they revert to old-school control tactics that won't help and will harm.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
My experience goes, the reason people don't some things at the dinner table is fear they well be attacked and bashed over the head with the (real-life-equivalent) of a steel pipe. In real life, people can't readily speak their mind at times. Now, perhaps this can be viewed as a good because it keeps descenting views quiet. Me? I'd rather hear the KKK and neo-Nazi members speak. Sure, there's the risk that they'll be able to recruit more members. But, history has shown that desegregation and other *real-world* things are what have life-changing effects on people's opinions on things.
Now, maybe the internet is really so revolutionarily different that there is no history to extrapolate from. But, if that's the case, it still seems the case that the good would intrinsically outweight the bad. Will people's feelings be hurt? Will there be trolls and flamers who are more interested in creating dischord than having actual discussions? Sure. That's the reason for things like moderation, editors, etc. The only thing attaching real-world identification to a username will do is either (a) keep the threat of steel pipes to the head from other users running so high that we're back to the self-censorship that leads nowhere (and open up places the Washington Post to wrongful death suits) or (b) keep the threat of editors and their reign of power so high that some people will stop posting entirely.
In short, being an online editor against a seemingly endless flow of trolls, spam, etc seems impossible. But, instead of trying to revert back to the comfortable and easy, perhaps more consideration should be done on tackling the problem by engaging it the hard way? Ie, hire more editors and stop treating online posting as some quirky, cheap add-on that you can control with a few lowly staff or some magical technological fix.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Ever read washingtonpost.com's comments?
Guess what they're anonymous and they're basically worthless, consider the lack of any meaningful moderation system ala Slashdot. Comments in articles quickly become long, barely threaded and filled with idotic or worse comments.
It's the rule of internet forums, without some party moderating the debate, the troll wins and the comments suck.
Slashdot's answer is to allow the mob (users) to moderate, but Brady, since he's from the more traditional media, is wary of the mob. The mob has all sorts of biases and tends to reinforce its beliefs. It may be interesting discourse, but it can be difficult to get a balanced discourse -- and this is something the Post is committed to, for better or/and worse.
End result: The Post has moved slowly on user moderation and tried to keep moderation in the hands of a limited number of editors, which becomes overwhelming with so many posts and so many trolls.
His answer, is to require require people's ID to post on his company's web site. Throw in a little potential shame of trolling and see worthless comments decrease -- certainly people will think about them more.
Honestly, I think Brady's wrong on this point, I think the right answer is closer to Slashdot than what he envisions, but it's silly to try to slur the man as an enemy of free speech. Remember he's talking about the policies of the Washington Post on the Washington Post web site, not for the internet as a whole.
The biggest enemy to free speech can sometimes simply be too much noise.
Oh, and on a related note, you may be interested in reading an article Brady wrote on the event that CNET describes as a "notable history." It's available here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021100840.html
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
It would be like a librarian asking for censorship.
No, it would be like the librarian asking for quiet in the reading room. It's not the dissemination of ideas or the idea of anonymous communication that bothers him. It's the disruption of discourse by people who refuse to adhere to simple rules.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ